I can't help but feel the "conscious mind" is unfairly getting a bad rap nowdays. Especially in the accelerated learning circles, it seems that the conscious mind gets blamed for just about all our difficulties and limitations. Its said to be slow, distracted, uncreative, biased. . . blah blah blah. Everything seems geared to somehow get around this dull bastard.
Well, its all too often that something is actually criticized for its best qualities due to a basic misunderstanding of its real purpose and true nature. And I happen to think that this is what's going on with the negative opinion of the "conscious mind".
At the rist of jumping too soon to a somewhat unsubstantiated claim, I'll assert that the foremost qualities of the conscious mind are the capacities for concentration and self-reflection. Self-reflection being dependent on concentration, I'll essentially only deal with this quality.
The next thing I want to suggest is the seperation of the word "conscious" and the word "mind". A person in deep meditation, a person lucid dreaming, or a person on an LSD trip are certainly conscious but not of the same part of the mind as when in a regular waking state i.e. consensus, sensory reality. So we can be conscious of many parts of the mind, we just get stuck in the linguistic, sense oriented, logical area by default. The arguments related to this area aren't really important right now, what is important is to understand that we are conscious beings and can be conscious of that fact.
So how does concentration fit in to all this rambling? Well, we are always conscious of something, aren't we? Concentration is simply the ability to hold that "something" in our immediate consciousness for a prolonged time with intensity. Let me clarify that I don't consider concentration to be a function of the mind. It would seem to be primarily a function of consciousness. You don't just concentrate on a thought afterall. You can concentrate on practically anything (external objects or internal objects). Isn't concentration really a matter of holding your awarness on something, your undivided attention? Its about silencing mental and sensory distractions and focusing on only one thing.
So how does this exonerate the poor old conscious mind? With the systematic development of concentration to a high enough degree, its the only self-help tool you'll ever need. Focus on an image, concept or thought strongly enough and you can pretty much activate any ability, release any potential, achieve any goal, create any dream, solve any problem or become whatever you desire.
[This message has been edited by Pratibha (edited June 07, 2001).]
